new offshore drilling?????

[qeuqheeg222]

what so y'all think will it lower prices at the pump and relieve us of ferin oil sources???i dont really think so ..exxon has said a while ago they had no intentions of picking up production levels until 2012 because of the high profit margins they were getiin in this the short term....i had a friend who worked for amoco in the late nineties early 2000's and big oil was all in the gulf but they were just cappin it off until the price got high enuff..i dont buy their bullshit at all....

[DSpar]

We need something different. We gotta use something that is renewable that way the price stays down. Unfortunetly we have a a bunch of crappy alternatives.

[trish]

The barrels U.S. offshore drilling would add to the world market will not be enough to offset the price per barrel by any significant amount. Just because they sucked it out of sediments at the bottom of the U.S. coastline, oil companies will have no incentive to sell it under what they can get on the world market…unless the legislation that opens up the coasts to offshore drilling also requires producers to sell to the U.S. market at reduced prices. I would wager such an addendum to the proposal would not be received so enthusiastically by the supposedly patriotic conservative party.

Given the miniscule savings that might amount from offshore drilling, the near certainty of oil spills and other risks do not outweigh the proffered gains. The republican governors of California and Florida are against offshore drilling for this very reason. Beach front property is way too valuable to put in that kind of danger.

[hippifried]

There's no shortage of oil. The oil pushers are just charging so much because we're oil junkies. Pumping it out faster will do nothing but make it run out faster. The supply is finite. Supply side thinking just encourages burning up the supply of plastics & all the other petrochemicals that we rely on for all kinds of things. It's more than just the cost of filling up the Hummer.

[chefmike]

I've always found the learned Raymond J. Learsy's knowledge and opinions regarding the oil industry to be worth a look.

The Time For a National Oil Trust is Now

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/raymon..._b_107831.html

[DSpar]

To hippifried:
Exactly why we need an alternative. If we have an alternative the consumers will push the demand down considerably. I am using "demand side thinking", there is no reason for oil companies to drop prices. None whatsoever. The only reason they would drop prices if they had suddenly found the had overpriced their product.

To Trish:
Your right too. People come to Fl. for tourism. Does anyone think is sells the state to see oil dereks in the gulf from the beach or to see animals covered in oil. People go to Ca and Fl for the beauty and I think the people from the middle of country seem to forget about that or do not care as long as they save 5 cents per gallon.

[DSpar]

Chefmike you should post more articles like that one. It is worth discussing.

[BrendaQG]

As into politics as I am I don't usually look at C-Span (now C-Span 2 is a different story!). Today I found myself looking at it. One republican and two democrats gave some really interesting speeches about all of this.

The republican was from a state that exports allot of Corn ethanol so what he said had allot to do with that. But he did show how such fuels along with increased production could meet our energy needs and decrease how much oil we need.

The really interesting facts came from the democrats. One was a rep from upstate NY another was from NH. I forget the names. They pointed out that the oil companies have leased out a HUGE percentage of the federal lands made available for oil exploration and drilling. But they are only exploiting a small fraction of those lands. One chart showed the number of leases granted, number of wells drilled, and the price of gas. The price of gas tracked the number of leases made almost 1:1. They looked strongly correlated.

The conclusion to draw, if those democrats facts were correct, is that opening new federal lands to oil exploration does NOT reduce the price of gasoline but in fact is related to an increase in the price of gasoline.

What did corrleated negatively to the price of gas on that chart was the number of wells drilled... In years where more wells were drilled the price of gas went down. But only a little.

If this data is correct it seems that opening new lands for oil exploration does nothing to lower the price of gasoline, More actual oil wells will make a small difference. Perhaps a few pennies.

I say pennies make dollars I'll take every one of them.

[BrendaQG]

To hippifried:
Exactly why we need an alternative. If we have an alternative the consumers will push the demand down considerably. I am using "demand side thinking", there is no reason for oil companies to drop prices. None whatsoever. The only reason they would drop prices if they had suddenly found the had overpriced their product.

To Trish:
Your right too. People come to Fl. for tourism. Does anyone think is sells the state to see oil dereks in the gulf from the beach or to see animals covered in oil. People go to Ca and Fl for the beauty and I think the people from the middle of country seem to forget about that or do not care as long as they save 5 cents per gallon.

The alternative is Nuclear power. There are all kinds of new reactor designs that are much safer than anything we have now. We as a nation just have to swallow hard and create a couple of places to put the waste. Places that have no other use to any human that has or ever will live. Once that is done we will have enough energy to last the USA hundreds of thousands of years.

Only if we are willing to do the hard work it will take to get it.

[qeuqheeg222]

and for them to dig up new oil would take a few years at least so the short term relief will be nowhere in sight..and if demand from "india and china" keeps growing exponentially like it seems to have been in the last 6months-it was in the 70 to 80 range...so in 3 to five yrs when all the flerda and california oil comes online the price oil will be about 250 a barrel????...